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After a long day at work of arduous programming, i come home to do what? Yes more programming. But wait there's a difference. At home, i can sip my beer while waiting for code to compile.

At work today i was able to take the Tiger dataset and draw a map. Tiger comes with only line data, ie. only one dimensional. However for each chain of points there are attributes referring to adjacent polygons. Using tigerpoly.py in the GDAL project i was able to construct the 2 dimensional polygons.

All that data was inserted into a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS installed. PostGIS and GDAL needed a couple patches. Then i wrote a Java program to grab the data using JDBC and drew it using AWT. Sure Java2D is better, but i'm not sure i need it. After all i'm just drawing lines and polygons. Sheesh.

I'm guessing all map data comes from the same source. The Census Bureau. Therefore, even Google (eventually) gets their data from Tiger. How is it different? Well (1) the roads have width proportional to the number of lanes, (2) all the corners are rounded, and (3) their roads are labelled. Those are the major differences in appearance. As for differences in feel, don't get me started.

And on a side note, it's been so long that i almost forgot my password to my own website. Back to dinner (Otter Creek Alpine Ale).